Apple is losing ground to rival PC manufacturers as shipments plummet in the key US market, according to a report from IDC.
The fruity firm's share of the US PC market slipped from 10.9 per cent last year to 10 per cent in the second quarter of 2014, while its year-on-year growth shrank by 1.7 per cent.
These dismal figures …

COMMENTS

Page:

So...

Apple did poorly against Lenovo because Lenovo did spectacularly. Nevertheless, Apple saw growth while the market as a whole declined?

Of course, I wouldn't exactly have described the PC market as "Apple's lunch" in the first place. Compared to shipments of other types of device and of other suppliers I'd have called it maybe "that small snack somewhere around 4PM that Apple eats a very small piece of".

Re: So...

Re: So... (@David Webb)

The article claims that Apple's "year-on-year growth shrank by 1.7 per cent.". You can't turn a positive into a negative by shrinking by a percentage. You can negate it but you can't negative it. Therefore Apple continued to grow.

It subsequently claims that "Worldwide PC [saw] a year-on-year decline of 1.7 per cent." which appears to state that the market as a whole declined.

Given that Apple's relative share within the US declined, as you observe, and assuming El Reg has subedited properly, I guess what we have to conclude is:

• Apple grew;

• the US market grew more quickly;

• the worldwide market declined.

The real absurdity is that an article that should be about Lenovo's incredible growth seems to want to focus on a point here or there for the fourth-place supplier.

Sweet indeed!

And most people at work still need a PC and need to run SAP, Dynaics, JD Edwards etc. plus MS Office.

"most people at work" need to run SAP, etc? Across all industries? Not in my experience. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that the majority of business-owned PCs are not running SAP, or most of the other packages you listed. MS Office, yes, probably, because the damn thing is nearly unavoidable.

Re: Profits?

Re: Profits?

Indeed, if the comparison was by revenue, let alone profit, Apple would fare much better. Even seeing double digits is good for them considering they were down below 5% in the US at their bottom a decade ago.

PCs are a small part of their overall profit anyway, the iPhone alone accounts for roughly half of Apple's profit.

Re: Profits?

Apple's profits are likely still the best or second best in the industry but this survey is about what consumers are buying, not about whether any particular company is about to have to shutter up. So it's useful to people like software companies. Even if Apple were more profitable than every other manufacturer added together, if they had only 0.1% market share then where would you focus your development resources?

Re: Profits?

Re: Profits?

Haven't apple been cutting prices whilst others have been moving to expensive ultra books for the high end? It's direction rather than absolute numbers that shareholders care about and I'd guess the direction favours PC makers.

"herds are growing tired of Apple"

Ah, the siren call of the Apple hater. They incorrectly believe that people buy Apple's stuff because of "marketing" or because of "shiny" of because of "sheeple" and think that they're soon going to wise up and realize Apple sucks and go with Microsoft/Linux/Android.

These people have been wrong for years, and will continue to be wrong, because they haven't any clue whatsoever why Apple is successful. Anyone who believes that people who make a choice different than theirs are wrong is wrong themselves. There is not a "right" choice for what PC/laptop to buy or what smartphone/tablet to buy. Once the haters realize that they might quit their wishful thinking that Apple is going to crater in the near future because the sheeple are about to wake up and think like they do...

Re: whether any particular company is about to have to shutter up

That's because

Macs never really escaped from the desks of graphic designers or others chained to Adobe products, only the media wonks and Nathan Barleys of this world want to pay that much over the odds for what is now basically completely generic X86 PC hardware in a fancy box with a massive premium on the price.

Re: That's because

Re: That's because

Macs are nice enough kit (I have one at work) - but - the games I like to play are never available on Mac, the electronics design software and CAD in general (Altium Designer, Solidworks e.t.c.) we use does not exist on Mac. So we have complementary windows boxes too.

I also think that Mac feels a lot like Linux - everything works with everything Mac'ish - but with slight inconsistencies that are OK to have for free software, not in a product priced at 4 digits. I think people love the design.

Re: That's because

only the media wonks and Nathan Barleys of this world want to pay that much over the odds

I have used Logic for my hobby (recording music) for around 15 years. It only runs under OSX.

A few years ago my old Macbook was starting to feel the strain so I Hackintoshed a Dell PC and managed to get Logic running on it. I was quite pleased with myself as it took me weeks to get it working properly.

The set up worked reasonably well until about a month later when I stupidly accepted an automatic software update. This completely bolloxed the Mac side of the machine and after a few fruitless nights trying to get it back I spat the dummy, gave up and bought another Apple laptop.

Not only did Logic run much more smoothly on Apple kit but I realised that what little I have left of life is too short to be wasting by either (a) spending months poncing about with a lot of frustrating Hackintosh kiech, or (b) the several years I'd have to invest learning another bit of audio software as well as I know Logic.

So, I'll probably continue on my current path of renewing my Apple computer once every 3-4 years, financed in part by the healthy resale value of my existing kit - something I've never been able to say about any "generic X86 PC hardware" I've tried to sell.

Re: That's because

If specialist software locks you into expensive hardware that's unfortunate, but those of us free to choose can get like-for-like performance for less than the cost of the depreciation in an apple machine. Your "high resale value" blinds you to the false economy.

Re: That's because

Re: That's because

They're very popular in US academia, particularly in the humanities. I've avoided them myself, because I hate Apple's OSes (dealing with OS X via bash or ksh is bearable, but it's still inconvenient at best, since all the applications are GUI), but most of the academics I know have Macs.

Re: That's because

Altium and Solidworks both work ok under VMware Fusion on a Mac Pro, but if you are using them all of the time, a PC (win7) custom built for SW is the way to go. At my last job I had both a Mac and a PC for SW and Eagle. The PC was not allowed on the internet and stayed and clean the whole 3 years I was there. For all of my other work, I much preferred my Mac.

I had SW on VMware on the Mac so I could grab stuff from Content Central. I was laughed at for being paranoid at first, but that faded as everybody else spent far more time than I did on bug hunts.

Re: That's because

Lenovo, no thanks.

I guess some of the IBM magic rubbed off on Lenovo, so I was unpleasantly surprised opening a four or five year old Lenovo desktop to see bulging capacitors like I've seen on "lesser" brand computers which were older.

Not at all surprising really. The initial rush of mobile devices is fading and people are coming to realize that they have to actually get some work done and a desktop computer is much better for that 90% of the time.

Yes, the desktop computer market will shrink a bit. No, the desktop computer market won't vanish any time soon.

XP replacements

<<<Not at all surprising really. The initial rush of mobile devices is fading and people are coming to realize that they have to actually get some work done and a desktop computer is much better for that 90% of the time.>>>

Now that XP is EOLed, a good portion of new PC sales are for replacement of old XP kit.

Legacy Windows Desktop PC under threat

At work we dock our Windows laptops into a docking station to get a decent mouse, keyboard and screen, and a power supply for the short-lived battery, on health and safety grounds.

However, I could do the same with my smartphone instead, and throw away my laptop.

In the short term I would use a Citrix session delivered to the attached screen to get the legacy Windows applications. In the longer term, I could run a full size browser to access the Cloud applications that will gradually replace them.

Then I can carry my 4oz PC in my pocket and use it as a smartphone when away from my desk, but use it as my mouse, keyboard and screen "PC" when docked at my desk to run my desktop applications on a large screen.

Most line of business apps will run happily through a browser today anyway, even though they are not yet Cloud-based. As as applications migrate to the Cloud, this will make the phone plus docking station plus browser the standard way to access all desktop applications that need mouse keyboard and screen. So the Windows desktop market does have a big threat hanging over it, and contrary to your rather old fashioned view, it may start a rapid decline within the next 36 months.

Peak Windows PC sales were 2011 when they averaged 90 million a quarter.

The quarterly PC sales mentioned in the article were 74 million, but 4 million of those were Apple Macs, and some were Chromebooks, so the Windows PC sales would be around 69 million.

Quite a drop from 90 million I would say. And that is before the effect that I am talking about starts to kick in.

Re: XP replacements

Now that XP is EOLed, a good portion of new PC sales are for replacement of old XP kit.

Very much my thought too. The trend for all computer vendors will be down, as the replacement cycle stretches from three years up to five, even eight years. Hardware doesn't wear out fast. Today's hardware is fast enough for most uses that people find for PCs, with huge amounts left in reserve for future software bloat.

Everyone who wants a Mac has got a Mac. Same for PC. Probably same for tablets soon if not already. There's a bulge in the PC replacement market caused by the EOL of XP and consequential replacement of many PCs 5+ years old that can't run more modern Windows well. It's distorting the figures.

In short, computer hardware is now a mature market.

BTW If you run Linux desktops in your business / school / home, you can acquire adequate hardware for free right now (i.e. ex-XP systems). You might even get paid a few quid to take it away.

Re: Where do self builds come in?

Re: Where do self builds come in?

> It would be interesting to know how many "boxed" motherboards Asus & C. ships... most of them will be self-built PCs.

Not that simple, because of stock and volume effects. As an extreme example I recently rebuilt a Tru64 AlphaServer, for the heck of it (I am a an admirer of "seriously sturdy computers"). Also I do regularly engage in MoBo-replacement to Magic-up family PCs. I'm really THAT easy ;-)

Boxed MoBos sales won't tell you nuthin', because of the enthusiasts, the gamers, the geeks, and well, all deessa not meena much.

Nothing wrong with Macs

at less than half the current retail price.

As the previous poster mentioned, can't be upgraded, so they are obsolete in a few years. Even though they are well engineered and well built kit, nothing would entice me to buy one. (I do graphic design amongst other things)

I am typing this on a machine that was once a 386SX (nothing of the original remains)

Re: Nothing wrong with Macs

I suppose, with windows or even the bulging Linux, it is necessary to be able to "upgrade" the machine just to keep it responsive. That was certainly true for my last Windows system and it seems to be true for my work laptop. As for the Redhat I have to support at work, that seems to require constant "upgrade" at every new release.

My ancient OS X white laptop, on the other hand, seems not to lose any performance with upgrades. The only thing I have done is get a bigger disc because I was filling it with photos and documents. I then took advantage and got an SSD. Now, well, I have abandoned the idea of replacing it for the latest. The speed is b- brilliant and even thngs like Eclipse run well.

So, if you get the right spec. in the first place, I think the average Apple system will be fine for its decent length life. That, I think, is good as I buy the thing to use, not to have to "iupgrade" just to keep up with inefficient software and bloated OS patches and upgrades.

Re: Nothing wrong with Macs

That's only because Mac hw is always on the high-end side and thereby it has a longer life-span, it happens also with Windows (or Linux) machines if buy (or build) high-end ones. The one I built in 2005 happily run up to Windows 7 until last year - when it was turned into a NAS server - replaced by a new built one that easily outperforms any actual Mac and will do for a while.

Of course if you buy hw in the lower-end side because it's cheap cheap and can barely run actual OSes and software, it won't be able to run anything new within three years - the Law of Software Inflation says "software expands to fill the available hardware" - developers often target systems on the higher end side, and while Apple hardware evolve slower (especially because if you want Apple there's no competition), Windows and Linux machines hw evolve much faster - especially because there's a lot of competition and some software, even consumer ones like games, push the envelope.